• Yang Zhang, Ji Qi, Jianyi Li, Shi Jia, Yitong Wang, Qiang Sun, Ye Kang, Yushi Liu, Yanan Cao, and Jiaxin Yu.
• Department of Breast Surgery, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China.
• Am. J. Med. Sci. 2020 Nov 1; 360 (5): 543-551.

BackgroundPatients with early-stage luminal A breast cancer (LABC) have better prognoses. However, follow-up examinations are frequent and remain complex. The present study examined whether circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection could be used as an earlier and more reproducible indicator of disease status among patients with early-stage LABC, and given China's healthcare resource challenges, whether it could periodically replace follow-up routine imaging.MethodsA total of 135 postoperative Chinese patients with early-stage LABC were randomly assigned to a CTC group (68 patients underwent alternating assessments using CTC detection and routine re-examination) or control group (67 patients underwent only routine re-examination). The prognosis and patient-covered costs of the various assessments were calculated for the 2 groups.ResultsNo patients had normal CTCs and simultaneous abnormal imaging findings. There were no differences in overall survival, disease-free survival and total patient-covered cost of follow-up between the 2 groups (all P > 0.05). However, there was a significant difference in the average patient-covered cost (P < 0.001). Furthermore, significant intergroup differences were observed in the total and average hospitalization times (P < 0.05).ConclusionsAmong Chinese patients with low-risk LABC, CTC detection was highly reliable and relatively low cost. Therefore, CTC detection may be used to reduce the number of routine imaging follow-ups.Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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